Roger Housden: 14 books

“Conventional wisdom,” says Roger Housden, “tells us that nobody goes to heaven for having a good time.” Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living, then, is a refreshing, liberating, and decidedly welcome dose of unconventional wisdom that awakens us to the simple delights and transformative joys...

Ten Poems to Set You Free inspires you to claim the life that is truly yours. In today’s world it is deceptively easy to lose sight of our direction and the things that matter and give us joy. How quickly the days can slip by, the years all gone, and we, at the end of our lives, mourning the life...

Roger Housden traveled to Iran to meet with artists, writers, film makers and religious scholars who embody the long Iranian tradition of humanism, the belief in scholarship and artistry that began with the reign of Cyrus the Great. He traveled to the mountains of Kurdistan to learn from Sufis, whose...

A Compelling Exploration of the Emerging Secular Spirituality What is faith? It is not something we must receive from a religion, nor is it a quality we must abandon in order to be rational. "Faith is not the same as belief," writes bestselling author Roger Housden. "A nonreligious...

The fourth volume in the popular series that began with Ten Poems to Change Your Life, Ten Poems to Last a Lifetime focuses on what it means to be truly human. In it, Roger Housden offers us poems on life and death, happiness, seeing ourselves in relation to the world, and, of course, the ineffable—the...

The seventh volume in Roger Housden’s bestselling Ten Poems series of gift poetry anthologies, featuring ten remarkable poems and Housden’s brilliant commentary Features poetry by WS Merwin, Wendell Berry, Ellen Bass, William Stafford, Conrad Aiken, Marie Howe and more Housden’s Ten Poems books have sold over 300,000 copies, many of them in the gift market

Is it possible to fully accept, even love, the life you have? Is it possible to drop the struggle to make yourself and your life different? Acclaimed teacher and bestselling author Roger Housden says yes in this profound alternative to nonstop striving and self-criticism. Whether about our relationships,...

In Ten Poems to Say Goodbye, the newest addition to the celebrated Ten Poems series, Roger Housden continues to highlight the magic of poetry, this time as it relates to personal loss. But while the selected poems in this volume may focus upon loss and grief, they also reflect solace, respite, and...

Every great poem invites us to step beyond what we know, what we think we can dream or dare. Great poetry is a catalyst for change: a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of life- and yes, over and over, again and again, with each new reading, and each new phase of our journey. That’s...

Great poetry calls into question everything. It dares us to break free from the safe strategies of the cautious mind. It opens us to pain and joy and delight. It amazes, startles, pierces, and transforms us. It can lead to communion and grace. Through the voices of ten inspiring poets and his...

Roger Housden, author of the best-selling Ten Poems to Change Your Life, celebrates the growing popularity of mystical poetry with this beautiful compilation from the Christian contemplative tradition. Although the writings of the Sufi mystics (Rumi and Hafez) and the Indian mystics (Mirabai and Kabir)...

In his collection Risking Everything, Housden addressed love’s many aspects. Now, in Dancing with Joy, he assembles 99 poems from 69 poets that celebrate the many colors of joy. Anything can be a catalyst for joy, these poems reveal. For Wislawa Szymborska, the catalyst is a dream; for Robert...

This book is a companion in poetry and prose along the journey of love and marriage. It is a song of praise to the love between two people, and to the commitment to that love demonstrated in marriage. As it evolves over time, marriage, like life, passes through seasons and stages, peaks and...

In this unforgettable tale, a restless young man is moved by the ecstatic poetry of the Sufi mystic Rumi to embark on a life-changing pilgrimage during which, after many challenges and strange encounters, he discovers that personal love and spiritual love can be one and the same thing. In the tradition...